


ocean's four

by serenfire



Series: buckle up kids we're fixing tlj [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Facing Your Fears, Finn and Co Hatch a Plan, Finn and Rose Go On and Adventure, Finn-centric, Flashbacks, Force-Sensitive Finn, Heist, Lando's a Fucking Legend, M/M, Major Spoilers for The Last Jedi, Overcoming fears, Pining, Rose for Next General of the Resistance, Rose-Centric, Saving the Resistance, Slow Burn, This is Finn's Story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-18 22:32:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13109853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenfire/pseuds/serenfire
Summary: “Oh my god,” Finn says. “You’re Lando Calrissian.”(Or, The Star Destroyer Heist)





	1. Chapter 1

Maz Kenata answers the call on the first ring.

Finn has been in Poe’s quarters for close to an hour by that time, and he hasn’t had enough time to fully comprehend that these are quarters reserved for a Commander, and that Poe is truly a big deal. Finn has always lived shoulder-to-shoulder with his unit, falling asleep to the snores on the bunk below, waking up at 0530 hours with his internal clock at the same time as twenty of his closest allies.

Poe’s room is nice, unfurnished, a duffel of Poe’s personal belongings slung onto the cot. All of the belongings Poe has left, except for the flight suit on his back, are half ripped to shreds. Poe is leaning against the wall, oxygen mask securely attached to his face. His slow, deep breathing reminds Finn of Ren behind the mask, behind the respirator, but just for a moment—and then Poe smiles at him, and Finn looks away.

Is his stomach cramping? Is that the feeling welling up within him?

Rose hasn’t let go of her lucky necklace since she entered the room, and since she has inadvertently kept Poe and Finn from getting blasted into space on the bridge, the luck had actually worked—and the Force had shown up as well.

“We have a plan,” Poe had said, twenty minutes ago. His leg jiggles up and down like he wants to pace, but he can’t make himself stand up. Not with his body still recovering. “But how are we going to execute it?”

“You’re the leader here,” Finn says.

“But you know Star Destroyers like no one else.” The look Poe gives him makes his palms sting, cold, and his gut uneasy.

Is Finn getting sick?

“We can’t get onto the Star Destroyer from any ship here. They’re scanning specifically for Resistance vessels. Trying to fly aboard it would be a suicide mission.”

“So we get out of here, go to another planet. Get another ship. Come back,” Rose says.

Finn nods. Rose is sharing information that Finn could never put to words, not in this state, not when his hands can fit around the shape of _something_ in the air that Rey, if she were here, would immediately call the Force. Finn is out of the loop of his own mind, and somehow inside it all at once.

Poe says, “We can’t leave here on a Resistance ship, they’d shoot us out of the sky before we jumped to hyperspace.”

“Then, something else,” Finn says. “Something smaller. A cargo shuttle?”

Rose stands up. “An escape pod.”

“Yes!” Finn stands up to meet her, gesturing with his hands. “Escape pods are too small, they’ll slip through the cracks. It will do.”

“Okay! We take an escape pod,” Poe says. “What next?”

“Wait. You’re not coming with us.” Finn can’t risk it. Not when he’s just gotten Poe back.

“The hell I’m not! I’m the only pilot you’ve got. What stops the escape pod from crashing into a star?” Poe tries to stand, reaching out for Finn’s hand to help him.

Finn takes Poe’s hand, but he gently pushes Poe back into the chair. “You can’t even stand. You can’t breathe normal air. You’re staying here where you belong. Someone has to make sure the Resistance doesn’t die while we’re gone.”

Poe sits back against his chair, closing his eyes. In the movement, something around his throat has been dislodged, something on a string, glinting in the harsh light.

There’s no time to ask about it now.

“So what’s to keep us from crashing into a star?” Rose asks the room.

Poe sighs. “Land somewhere you know is safe, somewhere that your friends are expecting you.”

“What friends does the Resistance have?” Finn asks.

“If they’re not here, then they aren’t helping. Unless—they have their own trouble.” Poe makes a move as if he’s going to jump out of his chair again, and Finn squeezes his hand to make sure that Poe knows he is under no circumstances going to do that.

“Who are you thinking of?”

“Remember Takodana?”

Of course Finn does. Seeing Ren boarding his ship, Rey unconscious in his arms. Finn screaming, his limbs moving without any express thought, just trying to save Rey. But he couldn’t, and Ren was gone. Just like that.

Finn just nods.

“Maz Kenata’s surely rebuilding her bar right now. She’s got to have a ship or two lying around. You two go—without me—and trade ships with her. She won’t abandon the Resistance in our time of need.”

“Wait,” Rose says, eyes widening. “What about the Star Destroyer security measures? They won’t shoot a civilian ship out of the sky, but we won’t be able to board without a codebreaker of some sort. What are we going to do about that?”

Maz answers the call in the middle of a firefight, trading shots with an offscreen assailant. Smoke fills the hologram, and Maz coughs, ducking behind a piece of wreckage.

“I could break through it!” She shouts to them, prepping her blaster. “But I’m in a bit of a bind right now. Union dispute.”

“The First Order blew up your bar and there’s a union dispute?” Poe deadpans.

“Oh, shut it,” Maz says, and turns behind her barrier and fires in rapid succession. “They tried to explain before exchanging shots, something about we couldn’t do any work on rebuilding without getting an advance first. Well, I’m _sorry_ if I didn’t remember, there hasn’t been any work done on this place in five hundred years!”

She’s interrupted by blaster fire again.

“I can send you to someone else,” she continues. “I trust him to be able to crack through a Star Destroyer’s codes.”

“Can he give us a safe landing spot as well?”

Maz frowns. “I doubt it; I won’t be able to contact him before your arrival.”

“Then it won’t work,” Rose says. “What else have you got?”

“I like your spunk.” Maz adjusts her goggles. “But sorry, I only trust him.”

“What if we come to you?” Finn says. “Can you give us a safe landing spot and a spare ship? We’ll help you with your dispute.”

“A safe landing spot? _Can you see my surroundings_?” Maz shorts out for a second, and comes back into view just as she punches an unseen assailant upside the head.

Poe cheers.

“Ugh,” Maz sighs. “Fine. I have a base. I’ll send you the coordinates.”

“Thanks so much,” Finn trips over himself saying, “you’ve given the entirety of the Resistance a chance—“

“Cut it, kid,” Maz grins. “I’ll help you because you didn’t run when I met you. You chose the Resistance instead of the Outer RIm. So, hell, why would I choose you…oh, _fuck you, mister_!”

Maz picks up a rock and throws it offscreen. “ _I’ll make you pay for that_!”

“Could you give us the coordinates?” Poe asks.

“Can’t you see I’m busy here, flyboy?”

Poe just smiles, long-suffering.

Maz waits until the fire overhead ceases, and rattles off numbers. Poe absorbs them wordlessly.

“You help me solve this, and I’ll get you inside that Destroyer.”

“Promise,” Finn says, and Maz gives him a middle finger salute and closes the channel.

The three of them look at each other for a moment.

“We have a chance,” Poe breathes. “Finn, give me your arm.”

A weird jolt goes through Finn’s heart. “What?”

Poe motions to him again, a pen in hand. “Your arm. I’m writing the coordinates down before I forget them.”

Finn rolls up his sleeve and hands his arm to Poe. Poe scribbles numbers down on Finn, and they are close enough that Finn can see the necklace Poe has on. It’s nothing like Rose’s Haysian charm.

It’s a ring.

Indescribable confusion flashes over Finn. Why would Poe be wearing a ring? How—why—

“All done,” Poe grins up at him. “Good luck. You too, Rose. Keep Finn safe with your necklace, okay?”

“No promises,” Rose gives him a thumbs-up. There’s a look in her eyes, not just satisfaction, but dread—she knows what lies ahead. There’s almost no way she and Finn get back from this alive. Not with these stakes.

“You ready?” Rose whispers to him as they head down the hall to the escape pods.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Finn promises.

**

“All right,” Rose whispers. “I know the guy that guards the escape pods.”

Finn peeks behind the post. There’s only one guy sitting in front of the row of escape pods, twirling a taser in his hands and looking idly at the ground. Finn knows the feeling of intense, endless boredom, of being assigned a task that will never be over.

“What’s our plan?” Finn hisses, and Rose is already standing up.

“I’ve got this. When I distract him, you get into a pod and queue the coordinates.”

Finn glances at the words scrawled on his arm in Poe’s terrible handwriting. When he looks up, Rose is walking over to the man in plain sight.

The man hears the footsteps and lifts his head, tensing the taser in his hands.

Rose gives him a little wave. “Hey, Greg.”

Immediately, as soon as Greg notices Rose, he deflates again, sagging against the wall of escape pods. He is aimless, dejected.

Rose sits down next to him. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just some pipes in a puzzle again that I can’t figure out.” Greg puts the taser down next to him, and Finn starts to creep along the floor, making no noise.

“What is the janitorial department assigning you again?”

“It’s the fuel. We don’t have enough, and they want to make the pipes that reroute it faster, so we lose less in transit between the shields and the cannons—you know—but it can’t be done on this short notice, and now they’ve assigned me down here in the middle of nowhere…”

Finn opens the escape pod on the end. Rose sees him, nods at him, but Greg is still involved in his sad tale.

Finn starts punching numbers as soon as he gets in, only noticing the silent red light blinking on the console after he’s routed the pod to Takodana.

He hesitantly presses the comm button next to it. “Hello?” he whispers into it.

“Unauthorized escape pod, identify yourself.” It’s a crisp female voice, and for a second, it’s Phasma talking to Finn, her voice cutting into his head in the bouts of correction. But Finn’s not escaping from the First Order, he’s already survived that victorious, and this is another voice that he recognizes.

“Lieutenant?” he tries. She was the one to summon him and Poe to the bridge.

“This is Lieutenant Connix speaking. Who am I addressing?”

“Look,” Finn glances to the mouth of the escape pod, like Greg will march into it, taser extended, but no one comes. He lowers his voice. “I’m on a secret mission. You have to let me go.”

“Who are you?”

“It’s Finn.”

A beat.

“ _The_ Finn?”

How does everyone know about him? “Yes, the Finn! You saw me earlier today. I have to stop the Star Destroyer tracking us. Please, I need you to help me.”

An idea pops into his head. “Poe! Poe knows about this. Verify with him.”

Lieutenant Connix is silent. She finally says, “Hold for me. I’ll comm Poe.”

“Thank you,” Finn sighs, and right outside the escape pods is a loud _thwack_. He rushes out, poised for a fight against this Greg man, but he sees Rose, catching Greg as he falls.

“Are you okay?” Finn rushes up to her and extends his hand.

Rose gives him a weird look and accepts his hand, standing up. “I’m fine. Had to knock him out, though. We can’t have anyone knowing about our mission. Right?”

“Right,” Finn agrees. Lieutenant Connix could jeopardize their entire mission if she doesn’t believe Poe, if she decides that protocol is stronger than a last-dash plan.

“Come on, let’s go,” Rose pulls him along, and Finn scrambles back into the escape pod, the red light still blinking up at him.

Finn wishes he had a necklace to hold onto, a good luck charm that he could use to pray with against all odds. Poe has a necklace, his ring—

Lieutenant Connix comes back onto the line. “Poe verified your story, and you are cleared to leave.”

“Thank you so much,” Finn breathes. The red light turns off and he hears the escape pod unmooring from the dock.

“No problem. And Finn? May the Force be with you.”

Finn pushes the escape pod forward into empty space. “May the Force be with you,” he replies, and punches the escape pod forward into light speed.

**

Finn and Rose are yanked out of the wreckage of the escape pod with the strength of an AT-ST, but when Finn coughs the dust out of his eyes, all he sees is Maz, her arms crossed, blasters hanging off of her jumpsuit at every conceivable angle.

“You made it,” Maz says dryly before turning away.

“Hey!” Finn jogs up to her, wincing. His left tendon is burning, and he looks down. A shard is stuck in his leg, and the cut isn’t deep, but when he pulls it out the blood rushes to the surface. “Why did we crash land?”

Behind him, Rose is vomiting into the nearby bush. Armor-clad people stand around them with thoroughly unimpressed looks on their faces.

Give them a break. They just _crash landed_.

“You got a coordinate off,” Maz says. “You almost landed in enemy territory.”

Finn looks down at the melting mess of ink on his forearm. Great. “Why do you have enemies, anyway? You’re Maz Kenata.”

Maz adjusts her goggles and peers into the distance. They’re standing around rubble of her bar, the natural fog of the morning obscuring their view of more than a couple feet in front of them. At the edge of his vision, Finn can barely see an exchange of blaster fire, and hear the grunts of soldiers.

“It was just going to be a peaceful work meeting, to plan the construction effort. And then the union was represented by _someone_ who couldn’t be bothered to see sense, and who wouldn’t take promises that once the Resistance returns what they borrowed from me, I’ll get my bargaining chips back. To pay off my friends who would give me enough credits to pay each of the workers for a year. But…it escalated.”

Rose, now standing next to Finn, coughs a laugh.

Maz looks behind the upturned rubble, functioning as a shield. “Something you wanted to say?”

“Yeah. Construction workers are people too, and they deserve to have money in recompense for their work. As soon as you use fear and blasters to intimidate people into working for you, you’ve become no better than the First Order.”

Maz lets out a breath of air, exasperated. “I’m going to pay them! I just need them to dig thirty feet into the ground so they uncover my coffers _first_. But they definitely have not listened to the plight of the Resistance and won’t let me keep a tab.

“Come with me. We’ve almost cleared a path to the union base. Don’t worry, I just want to talk to the man in charge, now that I have a Resistance hero here to explain the delay. He won’t listen to me because he is a _jackass_!” She screams the last word as she ducks out from under the rubble and fires into the mist.

Finn follows her. The last time he was here, he tried to save Rey’s life and failed. The last time he was here, he stopped feeling the clench of his gut and just—gunned down stormtroopers, killed people he might have grown up with. Any one of them could have been thinking of defecting, and Finn just open fired.

No one’s getting hurt this time.

Maz juts her chin at Rose. “Can you fire a blaster?”

Rose sets her chin back—not opposed to Maz any longer, but indifferent. “I can try.”

The question is stuck in Finn’s head: _Why didn’t you give me one?_ But Maz was with him at the last battle, and she knows why.

Maz tosses Rose a blaster. “Cover my back. Aim for the knees. We’re almost there. And go!”

The three of them race out into the midst of the mist, Finn looking out for any glint of humans among the cloud of dust.

As they run, Maz yells at him, “What did you do with the lightsaber I gave you?”

Finn remembers using it on Kylo Ren, successfully pushing him back in the snow on Starkiller Base. He had looked at Rey’s unmoving body and he knew that he had to do something. So Finn hadn’tlit the lightsaber and charged Ren.

What happened after he fell into the snow, turning it crimson around him? What happened after the pain consumed him?

“Rey took it,” Finn says. “She’s training with Luke Skywalker.”

“Good, so they pieced together the map. We have a saving chance at the galaxy.” Maz’s eyes are kind, now, as they duck through scattered enemy fire. “Almost there.”

Rose catches up to Finn as they continue to move. “I still don’t think we should be siding against a union. Don’t you?”

“Stormtroopers didn’t have a union. The First Order doesn’t do unions. Either way, Maz is still trying to reconcile with them.”

“With blasters! That we’re carrying!”

“Stun setting,” Finn says. A figure comes barreling out of the fog right at Rose, and Finn raises his blaster to fire at it. Before he can, Rose takes her own blaster and pistol-whips the man right under his chin. He falls down.

“He’s fine,” Rose says. “Just unconscious.”

“That’s a lot of skill for a mechanic.”

“I wasn’t always a mechanic.”

“What did you used to be, Rose?”

“A child.”

They run through the ruins of Takodana.

Rose says, “I was a child when the First Order took over Hays Minor. When they came for my parents to practice shelling—” She kicks the knee of an assailant. “When they decided we were the best ones to create their weapons for them. So Paige and I used the weapons they forced us to build to escape. And we made it out. Against all odds.”

Rose’s necklace flashes in the light.

And just like that, they’re inside one of the only standing shelters left, Maz halting directly in front of them.

“We’re here,” Maz grits her teeth, blaster trained on the dim interior.

Rose aims her weapons at the walls, at the darkness around them. Finn can’t see anything until his eyes adjust to the darkness. It’s a one-room base, a table set up in the center. Behind it, a man, overseeing everything.

Maz sees him and lowers her weapon. Finn still can’t make out his face.

“We’ve come to help you understand why the Resistance can’t return their down payment,” Maz says with a dry voice. “This is Finn, hero of the battle of Starkiller Base. He’s here to give you a speech—”

Finn walks toward the table, Rose’s story churning in his head. He doesn’t know what to say to convince this man shrouded in shadows to believe him. “I’m Finn,” he begins.

The man doesn’t move a muscle or an expression on his covered face.

“I was a stormtrooper. I left the First Order, and I didn’t just run to a far corner of the universe. I couldn’t just leave my only friends to die at the hands of the First Order. I, had to stand my ground for what I believe in. So, yes, I was at Starkiller Base. I saw Han Solo die. I fought Kylo Ren. And after all of that, I can’t let the First Order win. The Resistance can’t give you back the down payment. General Organa might not survive the night. The Resistance is on its last stand. And we’re the only ones that can stop the First Order from annihilating the last bit of hope in the galaxy. So please—”

Finn’s words catch.

Rose touches Finn’s back so that he knows she’s by his side. Rose finishes for him, “Please, stop this dispute against Maz Kenata. She’s the only person that can help us break inside a Star Destroyer.”

The man shrouded in darkness is still for a moment, and then throws back his head and laughs.

Finn starts at the sound.

“Kid, you drive a hard bargain, but you said this is Leia Organa’s last stand? Yeah, I’ll help you.”

He walks forward, and the light from the doorway shines on him, beaming.

Finn’s breath stops in his throat, because he knows that face from history textbooks and urban legends about the fall of the Empire.

He knows who this is.

“Oh my god,” Finn says. “You’re Lando Calrissian.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Around him, lasers hit the complicated machinery of the tracking room, and sparks vault over him. Behind him, stormtroopers are running to catch him.
> 
> Finn isn’t firing back. Finn is reaching out to the bracelet.
> 
> The bracelet hiccups on the counter, twisting slightly. The room seems to hold its breath.
> 
>  _Come on,_ Finn thinks. _Do this for me. ___

“If Leia needs my help, then I’m in. No questions asked.”

“Calrissian—“ Maz begins, but doesn’t continue.

“Wait a minute.” Rose rests her hands flat on the table. “Finn seems to think you’re a big deal. And Finn’s a big deal, so you must be an even bigger deal. But I’ve never heard of you.”

“Well, that’s your own loss.” The man flashes a grin at Rose, and she gets the aura of a man who has never lost his charm, even after he passed his prime. He could have been something, once—a public figure or a politician. Now his hair is graying and he wears the weight of a few wars on his shoulders.

That’s what all heroes do, though. They endure. They survive.

Finn picks his jaw up off the floor to say, “This is Lando Calrissian! He personally staged a rebellion against Darth Vader during Vader’s siege of Bespin! He and General Organa, and Luke Skywalker, and…Han Solo were there too.”

Lando Calrissian doesn’t notice Finn’s pause, breezily slinging his blaster off his shoulder and placing it on the table as a truce. “It seems everyone knows my story. What a fairytale. We all bravely fought against the evil Empire, and no one got hurt. You shouldn’t trust everything you hear in stories, kid.”

Finn stares him in the eye. “It wasn’t a story. It was a Republic history book, smuggled into my barracks on pain of death, passed around like a sacred Jedi text. It was a form of dissent before I knew what that meant, and you will not stand there and tell me that the past has been romanticized, not when you’re the only one of your old comrades—and those of us gathered here today—who might survive the night.”

Calrissian’s bravado melts like candle wax Rose used as a child to light to keep her vision trained on similarly smuggled texts, except those were about building Y-Wings and reassembling blasters.

“Hey Finn,” Rose comments. “Reading smuggled texts must be a universal experience.”

Finn’s eyes soften, and he bites off a laugh. The pain washes out of the lines in his forehead.

“You’re right,” Calrissian says. “We did fight against the Empire, and we won, and it was the stuff of legend. But that’s where our luck ran out.”

“What happened?” Rose knows what Finn figured out seconds ago—that Lando doesn’t know Han Solo is dead. So what else happened to him?

“You remember Starkiller Base.”

“Very much so,” Finn nods.

“Bespin’s in the Hosnian system. You know what they did to that.”

Rose does. She had been watching from her sister’s ship, cleaning it with her before Paige shipped off to her unit for another top-secret mission. A boom cracked the earth, and red hot beams split the D’Qar sky.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Finn says, and he gives Rose a look. Rose is very good at interpreting looks. This one says _Don’t mention Han Solo’s death._

Rose wasn’t even there. She’s not the one that remembers it. She just watched the interview Rey gave to the General, recorded on a grimy tape that was viewed by the Resistance ranks, so everyone knew what they sacrificed that day.

And what they won.

“I wasn’t on Bespin that day. And now I can never go back. Nowhere to go but up, and in this economy, there’s always some way to go up. Speaking of which…helping the Resistance?”

“Umm.” Finn gives Rose another look. Rose doesn’t know this expression. “You don’t have to, Mr. Calrissian. We have Maz, she can break us into the Star Destroyer.”

“Those are biohexacryptical locks,” Lando says. “Changed every twelve hours. Only members of the First Order have access to them.”

“Yes, and Maz can hack them.” Rose shrugs as if to say, _Tough luck._ “And Finn can guide us through the interior, and I can disable the tracking device.”

Lando’s eyebrows twitch at that. “What’s the tracking device? It would be easier to destroy most things in the galaxy rather than break onto a Star Destroyer.”

Finn’s hand hovers over his wrist where the beacon to Rey blinks on command. For the first time since Finn recognized this man off the pages of his childhood education, apprehension wells in his throat. The device links him to Rey, and Finn has to get Rey back to them. There’s no way of knowing how to get to Rey without the bracelet, but with it still on the Resistance cruiser, Rey would be blindly walking into a firefight.

The bracelet is secure and comfortable around Finn’s arm. It warms him. It brings Finn the last vestige of comfort in knowing that this suicide mission won’t be in vain, if it means saving Rey.

There might be another element linking Finn and Rey together in this, and it might be linked to an ancient religious order, but Finn can’t worry about that now.

“You can’t destroy it,” Finn says. He holds the bracelet in the palm of his hand, and it pulses comfortingly.

“What, is it the Resistance ship itself or something? Everything can be destroyed somehow. It worked for the Death Star twice.”

“I won’t let you destroy it,” Finn clarifies. He holds out his palm and shows Calrissian the bracelet. “It’s the only link I have left to my friend.”

“And we’re not even one hundred percent sure it _is_ the tracker,” Rose says. “We don’t have the equipment to run any official tests until we reach the Destroyer, so it could in fact be the Resistance ship that the First Order is tracking. Through lightspeed.”

“But we doubt it,” Finn finishes for her. “This is the only variable introduced since the last time the Resistance escaped the grasp of the First Order. Everything else is the same.”

Except for the fact that every soul in the Hosnian system has died and Finn’s life has been irreversibly changed because of the Resistance. So many things have happened to Finn and his friends in the last couple of days, but tracking technology hasn’t changed. It can’t have.

“Right,” Lando Calrissian summarizes. “We can’t destroy it because we have to be able to track down your friend, but we can’t toss it onto the safest planet in existence because we need to track down your friend.”

“The one thing that will save the Resistance, Rey, is indirectly influencing the one thing that will destroy it.” Finn smiles, all teeth.

A voice in the distance, in the back of his brain, says: _Balance._

Finn resists the urge to look over his shoulder.

Maz crosses her arms. “Well, I still don’t think we should involve Calrissian in this. Who knows? Maybe you’re trying to get me off my planet so you can ransack my bar.”

“Who, me? I would never do that to you, Maz. Especially not with Princess Leia’s life on the line. I’m practically a reformed man now.”

Maz looks to Finn and Rose. “I’ve been out of the loop of history for a while, but can we trust this man?”

“When Leia Organa and Han Solo trusted him, he sold them to Darth Vader for control of Bespin,” Finn says. “Trust me, the history textbook never romanticized the past.”

“Hey.” Lando sounds offended. “What your precious smuggled history books don’t teach you is that I was forced to do that, and I helped them escape after that.”

“With the help of Luke Skywalker,” Finn is quick to add.

Lando inclines his head. “With the help of Luke Skywalker.”

“With all luck,” Finn says, “we’re all going to get the help of Luke Skywalker, any goddamn day now.”

**

Maz has an array of ships in the partially dug-out garage in her bar, and they choose the most formal one, one that could pass as a civilian transport recycled into use by the First Order. Finn has experienced firsthand the money shortages the First Order has gone through in their brief reign. The lack of cash affected stormtroopers’ stomachs most of all, but it also affected the appearance of their transports.

“It’ll take a few hours,” Maz says, stretching out in the pilot’s seat. “Get comfortable, maybe get some rest. Pray for survival.”

Finn’s a realist. He knows that there’s no chance of survival, because with their deaths they will bring balance.

So he can’t sleep on the bunks set up in the back quarters, and he’s not the only one. Rose didn’t even take her bunk, and after Finn stares at the blank ceiling, he needs to get up and move around. Make a plan. Stretch his aching knees.

He finds Calrissian by the caf station. The man may be a legend, but he drinks like a man forgotten by history.

Calrissian raises his glass to Finn. “How’s it going?”

Finn stares him down. How is he supposed to answer the question?

“We have no coherent plan once we get on the Star Destroyer, because Rose is the only one that knows how to disable the tracking device, but that’s it. I know the floor plan, but the floor plan means nothing. I don’t know the rotation of the guards or the officers on duty. I don’t know who we’re up against, and we’re all going to die without ever reaching the tracking room.”

Calrissian motions to him. “Sit.”

Finn takes a seat next to the older man, and he balls his hands up in his jacket—Poe’s jacket—as he does. The favorite part about the jacket is that Finn can wrap himself up in it and feel like he did when Poe hugged him, when Poe wrapped his arms around him and said, “Buddy!” like Finn was the only person in the world.

Staples line the back of it where Ren sliced through Finn’s flesh, a testament of Poe’s dedication to his jacket, and by extension, Finn.

Finn doesn’t know what to make of any of it.

“Kid, there’s no way we’re going to create a foolproof plan, not with this number of odds. But we can rest your mind, so you’re sharp on the job. Is there anything you want to get out of your system before we land?”

Finn holds his jacket tight around him. “There is, actually. Can you tell me about the General?”

Lando chuckles, and his eyes are still focused on Finn but they are also somewhere far out, far back in time.

General Organa was a myth inside the First Order when Finn was just a trainee. She was the ultimate challenge, and it was every young trooper’s dream to stare her down their blaster sight and squeeze the trigger. When Finn grew and learned about battle strategy, she was the strategist the First Order couldn’t understand—a successful diplomat in the Imperial Senate, and then the leading force behind the New Republic, but also a spy since childhood for terrorist organizations that always seemed to stay out of reach of the government’s grasp.

“Let me tell you about love,” Lando says. “She was not quite the unstoppable arm of the Resistance when I met her. She was royalty. In command of everything, at every moment. She and Han visited me on Bespin—the moment all the history books remember. And the Empire took over, and captured them, but she—Leia—never forgot her cool for a second. I don’t know how, but she knew that everything was going to go her way, even as she was being tortured.”

“General Organa was tortured?”

People who are tortured and survive don’t generally regroup and beat the torturers. They usually die in pain. But General Organa bested the Empire, and she’s still fighting today, even if she is on life support.

“After,” Lando continues, “she assured me that it wasn’t my fault. The questioning, the torture. But even after I smoked the units of stormtroopers sent my direction, and I helped them get off Cloud City, I couldn’t convince myself that I wasn’t to blame. I knew inside that I had contributed to her pain, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.

“I realized then that I was in love.”

“In love?” With the object of his guilt? Finn narrows his eyes.

“Of course. She arrived in my life, just a pal of Han’s, who I hated, who I lost a bet to, who I lost my best ship to, but then she was a brave leader even in one of the hardest crises of her life. Something I wasn’t, when it was my turn to face Vader. So yeah, kid, I got a bit of a crush on the Princess after that.”

He slugs Finn in the shoulder, and Finn can’t help but to grin.

“I can understand that,” Finn says. Watching someone’s leadership skills and going: hey there, you’re amazing.

“Oh, really?” Calrissian sits back. “Who are you admiring, Finn?”

“No one.”

A man who stared into the face of death and instead of turning around, rescued someone from it. A man who watched the General, a mentor who was like a mother to him, get blasted into space, presumably dead. A man who sat by her bedside and breathed from an oxygen tank and hatched a plan to save the Resistance in her stead. Because he’s a true leader.

“Sure,” Calrissian grins, and finishes off his caf with a flourish. “Your eyes reveal everything about your soul.”

“Mr. Calrissian, please, this is war. Not a time to think about crushes.” Finn hugs the jacket over more of him. He really is into Poe, isn’t he?

“Call me Lando. Calrissian was my mother. Finn, we’re saving the galaxy together, we can act like pals.” He leans back and checks his watch. “Well, glad I distracted you from the lack of a plan. I’m going to hit the hay. Wake me up when we get there.”

Calrissian—Lando, Finn will have to remember—wanders off, and Finn just sits there.

He definitely, one hundred percent, is in love with Poe.

**

Rose joins the flight deck where Maz is calmly running the ship to their own demise. Maz doesn’t give her any visible signs of noticing her when she sits down in the co-pilot’s seat.

Rose looks out over the stars, where they blur into lines at lightspeed, the stars streaking a path for them, directly back into danger.

“I can’t believe we’re going back,” she says.

Maz adjusts her goggles and looks at Rose. “What would you rather us be doing?”

Rose tugs at her mechanic’s outfit, too hot around her throat. “Going to our allies. Rallying the only hope we have left. Anything but this.”

“So sure this will fail?”

Rose’s mouth is dry. It’s not that. She trusts Finn to know what he’s doing. She trusts Maz to be able to land them safely on the Destroyer. But…

“The Resistance is on the verge of destruction. They—we—won’t last much longer. But we’re out. We could do so much more good for the galaxy by continuing their legacy, not returning to a dying fleet.”

Maz chuckles. “Finn’s cynicism washing off on you?”

“It’s not him. It’s my own opinion.”

“If the Resistance’s own troops want to jump ship, it’s no wonder they’re losing the war.”

Rose presses her mouth into a firm line. “No. I don’t want to abandon ship. I want to be able to affect change. This isn’t going to save the Resistance. It’s going to delay the inevitable. So we jump to lightspeed, so they can’t follow. They’ll just find us another day. We’ll let something slip—a comm line, a location beam—and then it will happen again, except that we’re scrounging for parts and time is wearing us down.”

“Time is wearing the First Order down, too. They don’t have allies in the broken fragments of the New Republic. Even planets that used to be aligned with their cause have denounced them, after everyone saw with their own eyes the destruction of Hosnia.”

“But they have Star Destroyers, and Sith reincarnate. I don’t know how to fight that.”

Maz fiddles with the antenna on one of her controls. “What’s your name again?”

“Rose. Rosario Tico.”

“Tico. I knew a Tico once. It’s a Haysian name.”

Rose’s fingers tighten over her necklace. “Yes, it is,” she whispers, a quiet ferocity to it.

“You must have escaped the mining colony.”

“We did.”

Rose remembers the palpation of her heart in her throat, her gut about to drop through the floor. The blaster cold and metallic in her hands. She couldn’t hold the sight steady, the colony guards clattering in the distance, alerted to their escape.

“Come on!” Paige had screamed, terror in her throat. “Get on the ship!”

Rose couldn’t make her feet move, locked in place. But she could guard Paige’s escape, make sure her big sister made it to a better planet and a better life.

Paige had grabbed her by the back of her jumpsuit, hauling her onto the stolen frigate, and Rose huddled in the corner as Paige lifted them into orbit. Rose had clutched the blaster tight against her chest.

“You’ve fought against things more terrifying than a Star Destroyer before,” Maz is saying.

“But I didn’t fight. I just ran. And I don’t want to run any more. I just want to plant my feet and fight them until they’re gone.”

“Sometimes, running is fighting. Sometimes, running is the best option.”

“But it’s never the only option.”

Maz finally looks at her, age-old knowledge hidden in her magnified eyes. “No,” she says. “There’s always another option. You would make a great leader, Rose Tico. You have a head for it.”

“But Finn—“

“Don’t misunderstand me, Finn also has a good head on his shoulders. He’s even faced this exact scenario before. But no one has your experience. No one knows what you know about the fundamental truth and logic of the universe. No one can quite bring your opinions to the table.”

It’s heady. Maz Kenata, talking her up, above Finn, a bona fide Resistance hero, and above anyone else in the galaxy. “I’m just a mechanic.”

“Sure,” Maz agrees easily, entering code on her monitor. “Now you are. But in the future the descendants of the Resistance will need a leader. Hopefully the Resistance itself will be disbanded by then, hopefully the First Order will have been demolished. Hopefully we will get peace and balance soon enough. But balance never stays for long. I’ve been through a thousand wars just like this, and it never gets any easier. I don’t know the secret formula to keep the peace. I just know that you have to try. And I believe that whenever the next domino falls, when a new threat emerges from the galaxy, that I can count on you to gather the troops and fight it.”

“I’ll try,” Rose says. “Just for you. I’ll try to.”

Maz grins. “I know you will. Because you’re a Tico.”

Beeps emirate from the console of the ship and Maz flips through the displays. “We’re coming up on the Star Destroyer. Alert Finn and Calrissian. This is our chance to save the Resistance.”

Rose keeps eye contact with her. “This is our chance to save everyone we love,” she agrees.

**

Finn leaves his jacket on the ship. He folds it neatly and tucks it into a drawer, feeling the soft used fabric one last time before he steels his face and follows the other three into the bowels of the Star Destroyer.

“Laundry room is this way,” he hisses at them, stepping around corners cautiously, blaster tucked beneath his chin.

No stormtroopers or officers are on this deck. Either it is a very good sign or a very bad one.

 _Balance,_ a voice drifts into the back of Finn’s brain.

Maybe it’s a sign of both.

The only thing in the laundry room is a solitary droid ironing an officer’s uniform. It pays no attention to the four of them as they scramble into officer uniforms and try to pat down unruly hair into a semblance of dress code.

“Your hair is too long,” Finn tells Rose.

“It’s not even past my neck,” she says. “It follows Resistance regulation.”

“First Order regulation is not past your ears.” Except for Ren, that is. Snoke’s apprentice isn’t really part of the First Order anyways, just sort of on retainer to them. “Wear this cap.”

Rose squashes it onto her head, hiding all of her excess hair. She steels her face into one of carefully lazy disdain. “Like this?” She looks like a picturesque officer.

“You could be Hux himself,” Finn assures her. He turns back to Maz and Lando. “How are you two doing?”

Maz seals the pilot’s helmet over her short frame. “Tell me, how much is the First Order like the Empire in that they will shoot non-humanoids on sight?”

“Less,” Finn winces. “They’ll give you a few seconds of a head start.”

“Lovely.” Maz’s voice is filtered through the black helmet’s respiratory system. “I’m never taking this off.”

Lando Calrissian looks sweeping in a First Order uniform, crisp and bright against his composed stature. He holds the pose for a second and then winks at Finn, and the facade is broken.

Finn is incredibly glad none of them could possibly be part of the First Order.

He puts on the officer uniform himself, the medals of honor pinned to his chest gathered from the lost and found box. He’s a medium-level Captain now, in a dress uniform. The Star Destroyer is about to decimate their rivals, so of course he would be dressed up in his finest.

The collar catches on Finn’s throat and he finds it hard to breathe. The fabric is reminiscent of his trooper suit, itchy and mass produced, and he’s back on a ship that he wanted to escape all his life. He has to concentrate on the mission in order to not break down at the first moment.

He clasps the bracelet buzzing on his wrist, and feels instantly calmer. It’s like Rey is hovering over him, watching him, hugging him, reassuring him. Everything will be okay. Finn will save the Resistance, and Rey will return, more powerful than ever, and decimate Snoke and Ren.

Balance will be restored.

“Are we ready?” Lando asks, holstering a First Order-issued stun gun.

The three of them nod.

“Finn, lead the way,” Lando says, and Finn sets out before them. The lifts and the structure of the ship is so intimately familiar, and Finn is captivated by how at home he feels, even in a place he escaped from not a week ago.

Only a few people pass them by, and they make no eye contact. Just as it should be. Everyone minding their own business, no one at risk of looking treacherous in the least.

Rose sidles up next to him. “How close are we?”

Finn’s grip on his bracelet is rock solid. He breathes evenly, counting it to the rhythm of his paces. “Not far. Three levels up.”

They enter a lift and the doors whoosh close. The four of them, ascending, alone, breathing in tandem. Everyone’s hands are a millimeter from their guns, ready to blast their way out of a situation if worst comes to worst.

“Are you doing okay?” Rose asks in a low tone.

“Been better. Will be better in five minutes when we save the Resistance.” There’s something else itching at his spine, not just the inevitability of a panic attack. Someone’s close.

The lift has a clear window down the main hangar, and Finn catches a glimpse of stormtroopers standing in formation, white armor glistening. Was that a hint of chrome he sees at the front?

Finn averts his eyes to the other side of the hangar. He can’t bear to look at Captain Phasma, he can’t bear to feel like she’s looking directly back at him.

He concentrates on the collection of ships on the other side of the hangar, but—Ren himself is standing there, his mask nowhere on his person, hair tumbling down his shoulders. He’s staring at something on the floor, a unit of troopers around him.

Finn feels the phantom pain on his back as he stares at the back of Ren’s head. It itches like a burning fire for a second, and then Ren turns around and locks eyes with him.

Finn can’t move, can’t break the eye contact. He can’t look afraid. There’s no way Ren knows who he is, and maybe the Force is connecting them, maybe Ren can sense something, but Finn is just another First Order officer now. He can’t look like a traitor.

Behind Ren, he sees a flash of brown, and for a second, he thinks, _That’s Rey._

But the lift ascends above the window and the connection cuts out. Finn sags against his own frame.

Of course it wasn’t Rey. Rey is on Ach-To, training with Skywalker. It’s just Finn’s mind playing tricks on him, or the Force shrouding his vision.

The lift beeps and the doors slam open.

“We’re here,” he croaks.

He keeps guard while Maz and Lando work on the controls to the door, bickering softly amongst themselves. Finn holds the blaster at standby, standing stock-still and his eyes glaze over as troopers and droids pass them in the hall. He just looks like a bored guard doing his duty, nothing to be worried about.

The door swings open, and Rose taps him on the shoulder. Finn practically runs into the room and the door slams shut behind him.

In front of him is the tracking beam, encased in glass. Controls line the wall, and the monitor spits out words and numbers at intervals.

Maz and Rose do a quick check of the surroundings. “No one’s here,” Rose announces, setting her blaster down on the counter and booting up a sequence on the monitor. “Finn, I need your bracelet.”

Finn walks to the counter, and as he does, the welling in the back of his spine gets progressively more tense. His muscles are taut and ready. A feeling inside him propels him to be at the ready, because as he approaches the tracker, he can feel from the bottom of his toes that something is about to happen.

He wordlessly gives Rose his bracelet. As it leaves his hand, the last vestige of peace and comfort that Rey is bringing him, even across the galaxy, leaves him in a rush of wind. Finn is just left with his nerves, his beating heart, the blaster clacking against his thigh as he can’t hold it without shaking. The hair on the back of his neck prickles.

Rose places the bracelet on the scanning device and the tracker displays a hologram of it onscreen. More numbers and letters appear. A location to Rey.

“Interesting,” Rose murmurs. “The bracelet says that Rey is here, on this ship.”

Finn laughs shallowly in his throat. “Funny,” he says. “Maybe it’s displaying where we are.”

But…was the figure on the deck of the Destroyer actually Rey? Facing down Ren and a thousand stormtroopers?

It couldn’t be. Rey couldn’t be that powerful yet.

Rose frowns. “Maybe it’s that.” She is quiet, and lines appear on the hologram, a status bar slowly booting to a hundred percent. “I’ve entered a code to display exactly what they’re tracking and how to disable it. It should be ready in a couple of minutes.”

The itch in the back of Finn’s spine, at the top of his pelvis, gets even hotter. He presses a thumb to it, but he can’t feel anything unusual. The scar tissue doesn’t even reach that far, but it’s throbbing nevertheless.

He hoists his blaster, looking at the front door. It’s quiet, but inside him, the same voice whispers, _Balance._

If he and Rose disable the bracelet’s tracker, maybe there won’t be balance. Maybe the Force is warning him that he’s going to tip the scales, that he is going to disrupt the system of the universe.

But Finn is saving his friends. He’s going to do it.

He lofts his blaster and looks at the quiet door.

“Eighty-five percent,” Rose whispers to the deathly silent room.

Finn’s finger itches at his trigger.

“Ninety percent.”

Then the front doors go _boom_.

Smoke billows from under the door. The blast shields hold, but all guns are trained on the front doors.

“How did they find us?” Finn hisses.

“No idea,” Maz grits her teeth, staring down the sight of her barrel. Beside her is Lando, equally prepared. Rose is still focused on the counter, her knuckles white as she counts down the remaining percentages to go.

Finn backs himself up against the counter. He shares a look with Rose.

“If this is how we’re going out,” he tells her as the door shudders again, something on the other side trying to shatter it, “then it’s been worth it, Rose Tico.”

Rose tips her officer’s hat at him. “Same goes to you, Finn. I’m glad I’ve been able to save the galaxy with you by my side.” She looks at the monitor. “Ninety-nine—”

The doors explode into the room, and smoke envelops them. Lasers fire out of the chaos, and Finn doesn’t hesitate, but squeezes the trigger and fires a volley back at them. It’s unlike his first fight, still as a stormtrooper in Jakku, because these people aren’t innocent, and Finn won’t lose any sleep over their deaths. He is doing this to save everyone he loves.

Blaster bolts embed themselves into machinery, sparking all around him, and Finn weaves in between the fire. He can’t see where it’s coming from, but his training instincts kick in and he ducks and dodges, the scar on his back straining but not opening.

He can’t see Rose or Maz or Lando. They are similarly embroiled in their own fights, but white-clad stormtroopers emerge from the fog at Finn, and he fires at the exact spots in their armor where they are weakest.

Finn was the best shot in his unit, but even he couldn’t make all of these shots. Bodies fall onto the floor around him, and Finn’s mind isn’t even racing. He breathes in and out, and his muscles move for him.

It’s the Force, all around him, guiding him into the perfect spot for every hit. For a second Finn thinks he can win, but the troopers keep pouring in, and it’s all Finn can do to cover Rose, working furiously at the counter, as he’s being slowly overwhelmed.

“Tell me you’ve disabled it,” Finn shouts over the fire.

Rose turns to him and she looks at him, fingers poised over the keyboard. The hologram is no longer showing the bracelet, but a figure. A figure in a jacket that looks very familiar to Finn, the one he wrapped up and placed in the hull of the ship twenty minutes ago.

Rose opens her mouth to speak, and Finn fires off more bolts into the maw of the oncoming troops.

“Finn,” Rose starts to speak.

Finn is close enough to stormtroopers to kick them, his body now in all-out war against his old allies.

“They’re not tracking the bracelet,” Rose screams over the noise.

Finn glances back at her one last time before he knows he will have to charge headfirst into the crowd. He know he won’t emerge unscathed. The bracelet lies, still in one piece, on the counter.

The First Order can’t take it.

Finn reaches out his hand, removing it from the firm grip of the blaster. It goes against every instinct he has, to let go of his weapon, but Finn has to get this.

His mind strains. Finn doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know how throwing his arm out in the direction of the counter, his hand outstretched towards the bracelet, will do anything. Around him, lasers hit the complicated machinery of the tracking room, and sparks vault over him. Behind him, stormtroopers are running to catch him.

Finn isn’t firing back. Finn is reaching out to the bracelet.

The bracelet hiccups on the counter, twisting slightly. The room seems to hold its breath.

 _Come on_ , Finn thinks. _Do this for me_.

In his mind is Rey, her lightsaber bright blue against Ren’s scarlet. Purple sparks clash between them. It could be in the forest of Starkiller Base, or it could be happening now, in the throne room of Snoke. Finn sees them, suspended in time, the Force fighting against itself as they throw their strength at each other, both ready to kill.

Finn reaches for the bracelet and _pulls_.

In his mind, Rey and Ren split apart, arching backward through the air. Here, the bracelet flies out of the counter and slips around Finn’s wrist.

Finn can feel a stormtrooper’s hand on the back of his neck, more troopers surrounding him. Time isn’t moving like it should, but he wades through it like swamp water.

With purpose.

With certainty.

A trooper is almost upon Rose, and she locks eyes directly with Finn as she says her last words. Her officer cap is knocked off, her hair flowing freely. Her necklace glinting in the light, a prayer and an omen. There are no tears in her eyes, just staunch resolution.

“They’re not tracking the bracelet,” she says through the silent noise. “It’s you, Finn. They’re tracking you.”

The base of Finn’s spine throbs unbearably, pain cascading through the rest of his body. He is brought to his knees, mouth dry, moving as slowly as the time around him.

It’s him.

A blaster bolt find its target in the center of his heart, and Finn feels no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one chapter to go :) happy holidays!

**Author's Note:**

> hey if you're interested in the rest of this story, subscribe to it, and if you're interested in upcoming installments where I fix poe and rey's storylines, subscribe to the series!
> 
> also, please visit the masterpost for this series on [tumblr](https://www.rosesskywalker.tumblr.com/post/168773996267)


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